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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28467105">weapons of war</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/focacciabread/pseuds/focacciabread'>focacciabread</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>calico skies [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Old Guard (Movie 2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>5+1 Things, Angst, Art, Boats and Ships, Established Relationship, F/F, Historical Inaccuracy, M/M, Name Changes, POV Alternating, both of which I know nothing about, i guess, it’s hard to write arguments between two people who will live forever, without being like well that was completely contrived and meaningless</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-11 00:40:55</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>10,030</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28467105</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/focacciabread/pseuds/focacciabread</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Five disagreements over the ages and one instance of being perfectly in sync.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>calico skies [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1918177</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>216</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>heyo back again, you read the summary, you know what’s up. Embarrassingly, this idea was triggered by something in my own fucking fanfiction but I thought it would be a fun prompt also I kind of love writing the historical fiction aspect of this (even tho it requires an open tab of wikipedia at all times and I inevitably get shit wrong, oops) so it’s more of that! I’ll be posting in chapters but like it should only be a couple days between them as I edit (title from, you guessed it, calico skies)</p><p>I had half of this written in like September and then I forgot about it until recently and was like oh yeah! And wrote the rest. I have no idea if there’s even still an audience for this but like, here you go</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>Hungary, 1250</b>
</p><p>Nicolo would call their first meeting with Andromache and Quynh an interesting night, but it ends much too far past sunrise to be termed quite that. Yusuf’s hand is heavy on Nicolo’s shoulder as they finally stumble out of the tavern together, Quynh’s laugh bright as she hangs off Andromache. Walking beside them, Nicolo notes how the women move as if they are one body. He wonders, briefly in his drink-addled mind, if he and Yusuf present the same sort of picture.</p><p>“Come on the road with us!” Quynh says, grabbing for their hands. “You must.”</p><p>“We have already agreed,” Yusuf laughs, but he graciously accepts the kiss she places upon his cheek. “Soon you will be begging to be rid of us.”</p><p>“And waste the decades we spent hunting you down?” Andromache says with a smile not unlike the curved blade of her axe. “I think not.”</p><p>The early morning light casts them all in soft relief and for a moment, Nicolo feels as though he can almost glimpse the friendship between them as a physical presence, a cobweb in the air. It had not so much formed upon their meeting, but was there all along, drawing them towards each other until it pulled taut somewhere between market stalls in the mountains.</p><p>His thoughts are interrupted when Yusuf takes an unsteady step that nearly drags them both down into the dirt. Nicolo just barely manages to hold him steady, a hand splayed on Yusuf’s chest. “Perhaps we should, ah, sleep,” he says.</p><p>“Ah, yes,” Yusuf says, a crinkle to his eye that Nicolo adores. “Take me to bed, Nicolo.”</p><p>Nicolo smiles into the assault of Yusuf’s alcohol-tinged breath and hears Quynh laugh again. “Ah, young lovers,” she says, tilting her head toward Andromache, who rolls her eyes.</p><p>Nicolo feels rather than hears Yusuf’s laughter at this, but finds for some reason he cannot join in. Quynh’s words, however nonchalant, have put something cold in his stomach. He dwells on it for exactly one beat before pushing it to the side. The drink, the late hours, they must play some part in his sudden uneasiness. Sleep will put it away completely, he thinks as they part ways with Andromache and Quynh to return to their separate dwellings for the night.</p><p>“We will see you in the morning,” Quynh calls over her shoulder as she and Andromache walk away to their own inn, arms linked.</p><p>“It is morning!” Yusuf calls after them before collapsing more heavily into Nicolo’s side. He turns his head and looks to Nicolo as if he is seeing him for the first time. “Hello.”</p><p>“Hello,” Nicolo says. He is too drunk and too tired to quite feel the face he is making, but by Yusuf’s answering expression, it must be something truly besotted.</p><p>“Take me to bed,” Yusuf says again, his eyes half-lidded. “Nicolo.” His delivery is now something completely else, something that makes Nicolo’s skin itch with warmth.</p><p>Nicolo hums. “To sleep.” He scratches a hand through Yusuf’s hair and Yusuf closes his eyes to the feeling.</p><p>“To sleep,” he agrees.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>Upon waking, the first thought Nicolo has is how beautiful Yusuf looks asleep in the early afternoon light. The second, however, is less pleasant: unlike the blur of the alcohol, the icy feeling in his stomach has not disappeared after several hours’ unconsciousness.</p><p>He lies on his back for a moment, thinking. It was nothing, what Quynh had said, yet it is also perhaps something that has been hidden in Nicolo’s heart for decades. <em>Young lovers</em> were her words, and she had been accurate in her assessment. While he and Yusuf had orbited each other for over a century and have been—colliding, for slightly less than that, what is that time in the span of the world? When he looks to Andromache and Quynh, Nicolo sees the evidence of their years together so evidently in the way they move, speak—perhaps even more in the ways they do not, the silences speaking of a knowledge of the other more than their words. He knows their tale from when they spun it at dinner last night, but possibly more so in the way they look to each other like they are beholding the deepest well in the driest desert. It’s a marvel, after all that time, to still love so deeply.</p><p>That is the crux of it, Nicolo knows—Andromache and Quynh are evidence of exactly how long their lives can extend, and they are evidence of how long a love can last. The only thing is—it could be that he and Yusuf are not built the same.</p><p>The thought feels treasonous to even entertain, here in their shared bed, but Nicolo cannot help but think it. He has no doubts in Yusuf’s love for him, and less in his own adoration, it is only—who can say what the future holds? Perhaps theirs is a love that will end.</p><p>The thought so upsets Nicolo that he stands from the bed as if to escape it. This action is not enough to rid himself of the idea, however, and soon he has exited their room completely.</p><p>Outside the inn, he does not get very far before he encounters Andromache, sitting on a step and cleaning her blade. When she sees him, she stands in greeting and places it on her back in one graceful motion.</p><p>“Nicolo,” she says, with an easy smile. “Beautiful morning, hm?”</p><p>“Too early for my liking,” he replies, glad to see her laugh at it. Andromache is exactly the person he saw in his dreams, stately and imposing—carved from marble, almost—but she is also warmer than he expected. A warrior when circumstance demands, a friend when it does not.</p><p>“We had talked about what you might be like, after the dreams,” she says, as if reading his mind. “Quynh was very worried the first time we woke up with visions of you two ripping each other to shreds.”</p><p>“She does not seem like someone who can merely bear witness to a fight, no,” Nicolo says.</p><p>“Indeed—she wished to drop everything and rush to your side, but we were unfortunately embroiled in the far east, and I,” Andromache tilts her head, considering, “I said to give you time.”</p><p>“And it only took a century or so,” Nicolo says with a wry smile. “But what can one hundred years mean to you?”</p><p>Andromache huffs slightly, but her eyes slide into seriousness. “One hundred years can be everything, one hundred years can be nothing—my advice to you is this: never become numb to the passing of years, Nicolo.” She rubs her knuckles against her jaw, eyes no longer focused on him. “Something that is here one day is so easily gone the next.”</p><p>Nicolo finds he can do little but look at her. “Yes,” he says at last, the pit in his stomach heavier than it was before. “Yes, it is.”</p><p>“Grim conversation to have before breakfast,” she says, slapping a hand on his shoulder. “Go, fetch your man. Quynh and I will join you for the only constant we’ve found yet in humanity: their creativity in meals.”</p><p>Breakfast is a quieter affair than the previous night’s dinner had been, but still more jovial than a meal between four people who met one day ago has any right to be. Nicolo, however, spends the event feeling as though he is almost outside of it, looking through glass at the conversation happening around him. He does his best to conceal his absence, but Yusuf stops him before they return to their room nonetheless.</p><p>“Nicolo,” he says, eyebrows slightly drawn. “Are—you were withdrawn, today.”</p><p>Nicolo abruptly finds he cannot look Yusuf in the eye. “I suppose I was—tired,” he says. “I will be better company tomorrow.”</p><p>“Are you not sleeping well?” Yusuf says, and his voice carries enough concern to wash Nicolo from head to toe. “I noticed you were gone from our bed this morning.”</p><p>“I was,” Nicolo says, and then struggles for further words. “I—”</p><p>“Is something wrong?” Yusuf says slowly.</p><p>“No, no.” He hates the worry in Yusuf’s voice almost as much as he hates himself for placing it there. “Our travels have left me more exhausted than usual, that is all.”</p><p>The look Yusuf gives him says he has seen directly through Nicolo’s lie but is willing to leave him to it for now, for which Nicolo is grateful.</p><p>He will find a way to get over this, this unnecessarily uneasiness. He needs but a few days.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>“Nicolo, if you do not tell me what has gone so wrong with you, I will tie you to an ass and spur it into the desert,” Yusuf says, a bitter twist to his smile. “Perhaps you will find your Jesus there, and confess at last.”</p><p>“Too busy turning pebbles into bread for the likes of me, to be sure,” Nicolo says, but realizes he has been given all the time he will be allowed. It has not been days, but an entire week since their last conversation, and the entire time Nicolo has felt so heavy with his dread he is surprised his footsteps do not leave craters behind him as he walks.</p><p>He rarely goes an hour without thinking of it, the horrible cloud above his head; the idea that he and Yusuf will grow, fall, or stumble apart haunts him far more than any crucifix ever did. He cannot imagine eternity without Yusuf, but he is hard pressed to picture what they will be like centuries and millennia past this day. He has seen how time wears away at even the largest stone, surely their flesh and blood stands even less of a chance.</p><p>“You have not been yourself since we encountered the women,” Yusuf says. “I believe you know this.”</p><p>Nicolo nods, feeling ashamed. “I do.”</p><p>“Then tell me what is on your mind—we have not had secrets before.” Yusuf’s face is slightly pleading, and it cuts Nicolo to the core.</p><p>“The fault is mine,” Nicolo says. “The knowledge of Andromache and Quynh’s long lives has led me to ponder our own.”</p><p>“Are you suddenly afraid of death, then?”</p><p>“Were that it was that simple. No, I—my concern lies with what will become of—” He grabs Yusuf’s hand when words fail him. “What will become of this.”</p><p>Dawn breaks on Yusuf’s face. “Ah,” he says. “You have concerns.”</p><p>“Do you not? Yusuf, in a mere few centuries, what remains of the world that is not changed?”</p><p>“I had thought,” Yusuf says slowly, and Nicolo can sense something building in his voice, “our love, perhaps, would stand the test of time.”</p><p>“But—if it does not?” Nicolo says. He is abruptly sorry to be looking at Yusuf’s face as upon hearing this, as his expression—breaks. Pieces of it float in his dark eyes.</p><p>“How can you ask me that?” Yusuf says, voice low. “I have loved you past death, I thought you did the same.”</p><p>“You know I do,” Nicolo says. The words feel stuck in his throat, he cannot express them, how frightened he feels. “But what if that is not enough?”</p><p>“Enough with these awful questions!” Yusuf’s face is the picture of anguish. “I do not want to hear them.”</p><p>“I do not want to speak them, Yusuf, but they have been plaguing me like locusts,” Nicolo says. He reaches for Yusuf’s hand again, but he flinches away, leaving Nicolo grasping at air and pierced through the heart. “If we quarrel?”</p><p>“We always quarrel.”</p><p>“Truly quarrel—if I make you so angry you cannot bear the sight of me.”</p><p>“Are you attempting this now?” Yusuf says, but sighs. “Nicolo, you know that could never happen.”</p><p>“We have seen enough that could never happen to know that is not true,” Nicolo says. “Are you truly saying there is nothing that could drive us apart?”</p><p>“I—” He cannot parse the look on Yusuf’s face. “I suppose I am not,” he says at last.</p><p>Yusuf is agreeing with him, but suddenly Nicolo would rather have had them argue about it for eternity. He swallows. “I see.”</p><p>“And you?” Yusuf says. His eyes are now harder than Nicolo has seen them in decades. “Answer your own dreadful question.”</p><p>“You are the center of my life, but—I do not know,” Nicolo says. “I cannot know.”</p><p>Yusuf nods, then shakes his head, and then gets up and begins to pace. “I do not like this thread of thought you have placed in my head, Nicolo,” he says. “I do not want it, yet where can I put it down?”</p><p>“Perhaps we should speak on it no more,” Nicolo says.</p><p>“But if you had thought of that minutes ago, hm?” Yusuf says with a grim smile, and suddenly Nicolo is angry as well.</p><p>“Do you think I delight in it? You cannot ask me to share my thoughts and then reject them,” Nicolo says. “This is something we must discuss.”</p><p>“It is?” Yusuf says. “You will forgive me if I say that I was much happier before the topic was brought up.”</p><p>“Ignorance is not a steady ship,” Nicolo says. He feels as though he is pleading now. “Please, may we consider what will happen if we change? When we change?”</p><p>“No.” Yusuf’s reply is abrupt. “No, I cannot speak with you about this now.” And then, before Nicolo can say anything more, he is gone from their room.</p><p>Nicolo falls back on their bed, more exhausted than he would be after a day’s travel. He feels as though he’s opened his mouth to let heavy smoke spew out, somehow choking him more severely once it had been released from his lungs. He aches for the simplicity of weeks ago, when thoughts of the future remained in the back of his mind, unexamined.</p><p>The hazy deep blue of the sky fades to black outside the window long before Nicolo accepts that he will be spending the night alone.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>Sleep is fitful, if it is there at all. Nicolo cannot completely tell if he ever truly lost consciousness; the night is something of a blur that leaves him feeling ill come morning. The restlessness comes both from the argument itself and the fact that he has grown so familiar to the weight and warmth of Yusuf’s arms at night that going without leaves him feeling adrift.</p><p>He rises from their bed with a churning feeling in his gut and a dryness in his eyes he cannot blink away. It is untrodden territory, an argument this serious. Certainly, they quarrel quite often, but those take place along well-worn paths; they know where to step. This, however, is more reminiscent of their earliest days, when the wounds—be they imparted by word or by blade—took more than a moment to heal.</p><p>Nicolo can only assume Andromache and Quynh are aware of the argument; if Yusuf had not gone directly to them after leaving their own room, they have certainly been aware of the rising tension of the past week.</p><p>He is interrupted by a knock on his door, and though he can tell from the pattern of it it is not Yusuf, part of him still hopes.</p><p>“Ah, good,” Quynh says when he opens the door. “I was curious to know if you had drowned yourself in the river overnight.”</p><p>“What would the sense in that be,” Nicolo asks. “It would not persist.”</p><p>“No, but that does not mean the prospect is untempting.” She looks at him a moment, her eyes gentle. “Come walk with me, the sky is perfectly gray—a good day for drowning, if you change your mind.”</p><p>Nicolo huffs a laugh but follows her out. It’s early enough that the markets are not yet filled with bodies and Quynh has little trouble snagging two pears and tossing one to Nicolo.</p><p>“So,” she says after a few minutes of silence. “Andromache and I had an unexpected visitor last night.”</p><p>“Ah,” Nicolo says. “Is he—”</p><p>“He is dead asleep on our floor,” she says, with a slight twist to her mouth. “Andromache had to be persuaded to not throw him bodily from the window.”</p><p>“I thank you,” Nicolo says with a small smile, and then sobers. “Truly, for being there for him when I could not.”</p><p>Quynh looks to him for a moment. “He would have preferred it to be you.”</p><p>“No,” Nicolo says, shaking his head. “Not last night.”</p><p>She tilts her head in acquiescence. “He wanted you, but perhaps not the line of questioning you were set on.”</p><p>“Do you think me wrong for it?”</p><p>She hums. “No, we all have our doubts.”</p><p>“I do not doubt Yusuf,” he says, the words out of his mouth almost before he has thought them. Quynh does not hide the amusement in her eyes as she slants her glance to him. “I only—eternity is a very long time.”</p><p>“Your crisis of faith forgets—nothing lives forever.” She takes a bite of her pear, eyes elsewhere. “We are not so severely limited as most, but death will stop for us.”</p><p>“And until then?”</p><p>“Until then, Nicolo, we live.”</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>He has not been this nervous to see Yusuf since their mornings together on that very first road, where waking each day to find they had not killed each other in their sleep felt like a victory. Now, part of Nicolo longs for it, for at least then there was a rhythm, a known tune to dance to. At the moment, he is unaware of the steps.</p><p>His knock is hesitant, the sound barely reaching his own ears, but the door opens almost immediately.</p><p>Yusuf stands there, looking—haggard. His hair stands in a way that Nicolo knows comes from hours of Yusuf’s hands running through it, and the circles under his eyes are prominent.</p><p>“You are a sight, Nicolo,” Yusuf says, breaking the silence first. “Have you slept at all?”</p><p>It is reflexive, the smile that appears at Yusuf’s words—it is so good, after these hours apart, to just behold him. At the small answering one on Yusuf’s face, it only grows. “And you fared much better?”</p><p>“Oh, yes,” Yusuf says, closing the door behind him. “I have not slept so deeply outside of death.”</p><p>Nicolo wants badly to touch him, merely a hand on his shoulder or ankle against his would do, but he is unsure if he is allowed.</p><p>“Yusuf, I am sorry,” he says. “I should not have beset you with such questions.”</p><p>Yusuf waves a hand and sits down heavily. “And I should not have felt so much anger at the fact that you did—in truth, I left you because I do not know the answers to them.”</p><p>“You must know I never doubted you,” Nicolo says, sitting beside him. “I’d sooner lose trust in the sunrise than believe you had stopped loving me.”</p><p>“And if that changes?” Yusuf says with a weary smile at their reversed roles.</p><p>“It will not,” Nicolo says. “And if it does—we will change with it. In my concern, I had forgotten we are not quite stones to be worn away, we are—” He snaps his fingers, looking for a word that is suitable for the two of them. There are not many.</p><p>“We are the river that wears them,” Yusuf says, and the smile on his face at this statement knocks the breath out of every corner of Nicolo’s chest.</p><p>“Yes,” he says, finally giving into temptation and leaning his whole body’s weight into Yusuf’s shoulder. “That is it precisely.”</p><p>“I will admit, you had me worried for a moment,” Yusuf says into the top of Nicolo’s head. “I had thought perhaps someone new had caught your eye."</p><p>He is teasing, of course, but the idea of it so sickens Nicolo that he is quick to disband it. “There has been no one before you,” he says, taking one of Yusuf’s hands in his own. “There will come none after.”</p><p>Nicolo knows that a century, perhaps two, from now, he will not remember exactly how Yusuf is currently breathing against him, the precise way his skin looks in today’s late day sun. But for now, he memorizes it with each inhale, tracing the whorls of Yusuf’s palm held in his own.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Bulgaria, 1450</b>
</p><p>Somehow, in the past hundred years or so, battles have gotten louder. Nicolo hadn’t thought it possible, but even as time continues to wear on, he is still surprised by the capacity human beings have for noisemaking.</p><p>Gunfire, that is the name of this new kind of thunder. It cracks across the air like a sign the Nicolo of centuries past would have tilted his head up to ask God for—painful to even listen to, and yet something about it must be heard. He has seen the wounds it makes as well, and despite his experience, their grisly nature leaves him with uncomfortable phantom pains. He wonders, briefly, how their miraculous bodies will confront being embedded with these bits of metal, if it comes to such.</p><p>“They will not last the next hundred years,” Yusuf says, his eyes closed against the fire they have made. The light casts him in a warm relief, all his edges rounded as he lays comfortable against Nicolo’s side. “These new weapons, they are not long for the world.”</p><p>“You have no eye for this sort of thing,” Quynh replies. She and Andromache have taken a similar position not so far away. If Nicolo wanted, he could reach out with a foot and jostle Quynh’s knee. He does not, for the same reason one does not step on a wild cat bathing in the sun.</p><p>“Oh, don’t I,” Yusuf says. “Nicolo agrees with me, hm?”</p><p>Nicolo makes a face Yusuf cannot see, but Andromache catches it and laughs aloud. “Your confidence is ever your undoing, Yusuf,” she says.</p><p>Yusuf tilts his head back to catch Nicolo’s expression, which he has now schooled again into something neutral. “You betray me?” Though his mouth is pulled in a frown, there is a smile to be found everywhere around his eyes. “You?”</p><p>“I’m afraid,” Nicolo says, his voice scratchy with disuse and drowsiness, “that I must defer to Quynh.”</p><p>“Wise,” Quynh says.</p><p>“I cannot believe it,” Yusuf says, placing a hand on his chest and sitting up. Nicolo’s side is cold without him. “After all this time, and I still have not earned your trust?”</p><p>Andromache muffles a groan into the top of Quynh’s head. “If I had known there would be such a performance at the amphitheater tonight—” She is cut off by Quynh’s laugh.</p><p>“Where have I lead you so wrong?” Yusuf’s hands are raised, almost begging. Nicolo fights a smile.</p><p>“You have led me perfectly,” Nicolo says, and his voice is only half full of jest. “But sometimes perhaps you are—”</p><p>“Ah, the killing blow.”</p><p>“—shortsighted.”</p><p>Yusuf’s eyebrows raise. “Shortsighted.”</p><p>“Nicolo is right,” Quynh says. “Surely you must see that these weapons are reshaping war as we know it.”</p><p>Andromache scoffs. “What, as Greek fire did?” she says. “Yusuf has my lot. In one hundred years’ time, man will move onto something else.”</p><p>Nicolo meets Quynh’s sideways glance. She smiles, tilting her head back to plant a kiss on Andromache’s jawline, made even sharper by the firelight. “Of course,” she says. “We may always hope.”</p><p>Yusuf looks to Nicolo with raised brows. “See how nicely they make up?”</p><p>Nicolo sighs and tugs Yusuf in by his clothing for a brief kiss just on the corner of his mouth. “Content?”</p><p>“Not quite—extoll my wisdom?”</p><p>He tilts his head in a mockery of consideration. “Never.”</p><p>“Confess I may be right?”</p><p>“I pray you are,” Nicolo says in a flat tone. “Will that suffice?”</p><p>“I suppose it must.” Though he sounds reluctant, the way he settles back into Nicolo’s side is more than enough evidence that the conflict will not be a lasting one—merely something to fill the air as they sit in the fire’s varying light.</p><p>Still, Nicolo finds himself lingering on the thought and wondering if Yusuf and Andromache may be right in the end. Remembering the shattering sound of gunfire, he finds that however fanciful, he longs to himself and Quynh proven wrong.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>English Channel, 1615</b>
</p><p>Yusuf is not usually one for feeling ill on the sea, but the raging winds of the storm have caused the vessel they’re on to tilt and sway in a manner that would make any man sick. He clings, slightly, to a rope as a fresh wave buffets the boat, soaking him through yet again.</p><p>“Yusuf!” The wind puts up a valiant fight to carry Andromache's voice away unheard, but it remains strong enough to reach his ears. “Are you still with us?”</p><p>“It will take more than that to send me overboard, I’m afraid,” Yusuf shouts in reply, spitting seawater from his mouth. It is cold, here on the choppy waves off the shores of England, and his body aches from the hours they have spent piloting their ship through them.</p><p>It has been months since they first began their frantic search for Quynh—the summer gales cruelly giving way to the harsh winds of winter—but Andromache remains resolute as stone at their ship’s head. They continue to look.</p><p>Yusuf sometimes wonders if it is not a suicide mission—as much as anything they do could be termed as such—if Andromache wants to wrap heavy chains around her legs and fall overboard. He has little doubt that the idea has crossed her mind.</p><p>Perhaps it even seems more useful than what they can do now, which is mostly travel atop the sea and hope that the string that ties them all together will pull taut somewhere along the way. It is not so much strategy as it is desperation, but the growing darkness under Andromache’s eyes drives them deeper into it. When he and Nicolo saw her for the first time after her and Quynh’s capture, she was almost unrecognizable, her hair shorn messily close to her head and a new wildness about her eyes. Her body was almost hunched with the incredible weight of her grief, and they could do nothing but nod and follow her into the search.</p><p>Now however, Yusuf wonders if the entire endeavor is not more likely to put the three of them at the bottom of the sea as well.</p><p>“Andromache,” he says, once the winds and waves have died enough that speech is possible. “It has been months.”</p><p>“Years,” she replies, eyes on the expanse of sea rather than him. “It has been years.”</p><p>“It has been too long,” he says. “But—we are getting nowhere; you must see that.”</p><p>Andromache’s jaw tightens. “So you propose we give up?”</p><p>“Of course not,” Yusuf says, frustrated. “But Quynh would not have us drown ourselves in search of her.”</p><p>“Do not attempt to speak for Quynh,” Andromache says through gritted teeth. “We will keep searching.”</p><p>Yusuf looks to Nicolo for support, but the man merely tightens his mouth and nods in agreement. “We will.”</p><p>Yusuf cannot help the stab of betrayal he feels at this but resolves to put it away for now. After all, perhaps it has been too soon to give up the search. “Very well,” he says with a sigh.</p><p>Later, in their shared quarters, he brings the matter up to Nicolo.</p><p>“I am almost jealous,” he says, a joking cadence to his voice that feels like a betrayal in their current situation. “With how quickly you came to Andromache’s side, hm?” For his part, Nicolo merely hums something noncommittal and does not meet Yusuf’s eyes. What was flippant before takes a turn in Yusuf’s stomach. “Why do you wish to keep looking?”</p><p>Nicolo looks up. “Why do I wish to keep looking for our friend of centuries who drowns again and again beneath our feet?”</p><p>“No, no,” Yusuf says, waving a hand. “You know we have as much chance of stumbling upon her out here as we would,” he gestures with a hand, “a decent meal on this forsaken rock of an island we’re patrolling up and down.”</p><p>“Perhaps even more,” Nicolo says, something that could become a smile on his mouth. It quickly disappears. “In seriousness—we cannot stop, not yet.”</p><p>“Why?” The question flies out of his mouth at a pace and volume that startles them both. He shakes his head and continues. “Andromache has just as well tied herself to our anchor, I need you to help me convince her not to jump.”</p><p>Nicolo shakes his head. “It is not—I cannot do that, Yusuf.”</p><p>It is the boat, it is the storm, it is the lead in his shoes that is Quynh’s absence—it is several things that make Yusuf laugh in a way he knows edges on hysterical. “Of course not.”</p><p>“What do you mean by that?” Nicolo’s gaze is sharp, but not sharper than the teeth Yusuf feels like baring.</p><p>“Of course, you will not fight,” Yusuf says. “You do not think you have to—everything has it’s time, yes? Destiny, fate, these are the words of a frightened man.”</p><p>“I’m not certain I know what you mean,” Nicolo says, but the coolness of his voice says otherwise.</p><p>“Yes,” Yusuf says, letting the tired laughter fill his voice. “You do. You cannot hide behind providence and expect it to make up for your inaction.”</p><p>“You speak to me of inaction?” Nicolo says, incensed. “Are you not the one prepared to beg off after mere months of searching? She is our friend, Yusuf, one of two that we are permitted to keep.”</p><p>“Months of—we will lose each other on these waters, more than we have thus far!” Yusuf feels as though he is already begun to drown. “Let us take the ship ashore, just for a while—there is no rhyme to this, no reason as we persist now. Surely you must see that.”</p><p>Nicolo’s jaw clenches silently, muscles shifting under skin. “It is more than we could do from shore,” he says, his voice even in a way that plunges Yusuf even deeper into hopelessness.</p><p>“You are lost on this idea, then,” he says, and shakes his head when Nicolo does not meet his eyes. “I will not waste my breath where it could be better spent praying for a storm to sweep us all to the bottom of the sea. Perhaps we will be reunited Quynh at last after all.”</p><p>He cannot bear to look back at Nicolo’s face as he leaves.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>The next storm is much worse than the last; waves seem to rise and rise until the entire world is water, the horizon a distant memory.</p><p>Since the squall began, Yusuf has heard at least one terrible splintering sound that makes him wonder exactly how they are supposed to survive this if even their ship has given up the ghost. With gritted teeth, he supposes it does not matter if they do, as long as the sea spits them out again after it has finished chewing. Lightening splits the sky as he wonders what their chances are.</p><p>Yusuf has just caught sight of the moving shape of Nicolo somewhere in the wind and rain when another rouge wave swamps the deck with an almighty force. It leaves him coughing and spluttering, wiping the sting of salt from his eyes as he attempts to find Nicolo again. Dread tolls like a bell through his body when he realizes he cannot.</p><p>“Nicolo!” It’s lost almost instantly, of course, to the din of the storm. “Nicolo!”</p><p>Yusuf’s mind goes blank with fear and he scrambles without thinking towards where he last saw the man. If he is overboard, they have most certainly lost Nicolo to the sea for—Yusuf’s mind cannot even touch the amount of time he will be missing.</p><p>When he looks over the deck to see Nicolo sprawled on his back, soaked and perhaps bleeding, but alive, it is as though the storm itself ceases. He is at his side in a moment.</p><p>“You bastard,” Yusuf says, hauling Nicolo to a sitting position as he gasps and spits through the water crashing around them. Yusuf cradles the back of his neck with a trembling hand. “I thought you’d—” He cuts himself off to press his forehead to Nicolo’s, shivering and wet.</p><p>“No,” Nicolo says, almost nonsensically. He pats clumsily at Yusuf’s face. “No, I am still here.”</p><p>Any words Yusuf might have to that are lost to the tightness in his throat and it is without speech that he hauls Nicolo to his feet and into their cabin, out of the storm.</p><p>Their room is hardly warmer than the deck, but at the very least, here there are no rouge waves to soak them to the bone. Yusuf deposits Nicolo on the bed and lights a lampbefore sitting down himself. They look at each other for a moment.</p><p>“Thank you,” Yusuf says, his voice gruff. At the tilt of Nicolo’s brow, he continues. “For remaining on the ship.”</p><p>“It was through no effort of my own,” Nicolo says. “But I suppose you are welcome.”</p><p>Yusuf smiles for what feels like the first time in months. “In light of it, let us discard this silly fight, hm?”</p><p>“A fight?” Nicolo say. “I cannot recall such a thing—it hardly sounds like us.”</p><p>“I could not agree more,” Yusuf says. “Besides, surely now you can agree—this hunt is more danger than it is worth.” Nicolo stiffens, and Yusuf’s stomach sinks like an anchor. He sighs. “I will not like this.”</p><p>“Yusuf—”</p><p>“Nicolo, please—”</p><p>“No, I cannot agree with you, even now,” Nicolo says, and there is a thin line of steel in his voice. “We will keep searching.”</p><p>Yusuf cannot control the growl that issues from him at that. “Why? Why are you both so intent on losing yourselves to this damned sea? Hasn’t it taken enough?” He takes Nicolo’s hands in his. “Please, if you cannot tell me yes, at least tell me—”</p><p>“Because I would never stop,” Nicolo says. His voice cuts through the air and leaves a heavy silence in its wake. “If it were you, I would—I could never stop searching.”</p><p>The words hit Yusuf like a fall, and he exhales without quite meaning to. His eyes track over Nicolo’s miserable face. “Ah,” he says after a beat.</p><p>“When I see Andromache,” Nicolo says, breaking eye contact to look at the opposite wall. “I cannot help but—imagine myself in her place.”</p><p>The lamp light makes the hollows in Nicolo’s face even deeper than the poor food has already worn away. Yusuf longs to fit his palms gently to them. “You could have said so,” he says.</p><p>“It is hardly my tragedy to invade,” Nicolo says, shaking his head. “It’s not right of me to concern you like this when Andromache is—” He breaks off to scrub his eyes with his palms.</p><p>Yusuf shifts yet even closer to offer the small comfort of physicality, and to receive it as well. He can’t feel the warmth of Nicolo’s shoulder through the double layer of their wet clothing, but the firmness alone is enough.</p><p>“As difficult as it may be to believe,” Yusuf says, the murmur of his voice quiet between them, “I can be sanity for the three of us. I merely need you to—”</p><p>“Allow it,” Nicolo finishes. He huffs out the approximation of a laugh. “I have been nothing but an anchor to you.”</p><p>“Ah, but what would a ship be without one of those?” Yusuf places his hand on the junction of Nicolo’s neck and shoulder. Nicolo looks at him with his sad dark eyes. “We will continue to look.”</p><p>“Yusuf.”</p><p>“Only for the next few days,” Yusuf says. “I will not pry your frozen bodies from this ship come the full force of winter.”</p><p>“You will be lucky to pry Andromache away from anything,” Nicolo says. “But I will do whatever I can to help.”</p><p>Yusuf cannot quite smile in the face of their grim task, but he reaches past the cold of their cabin to grasp Nicolo’s hand in his own. For now, it is enough.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <b>France, 1850</b>
</p><p>“Is this—ah,” Yusuf says. “Another drawing.” He holds up the offending paper with a shake, shooting Nicolo a smile.</p><p>“Hm?” Nicolo says, looking to him with eyebrows raised. When he sees the page, his face clears. “Ah, yes.”</p><p>“You’re still being courted, then?” Yusuf says. He looks to the work in his hands. It’s—not bad, a sketch of Nicolo in profile where the light glances off the hollows of his cheekbones. He is not posed in any particular way, the piece perhaps striking in the fact he is instead drawn taking part in the everyday task of lifting a crate.</p><p>“Is it my fault I inspire such things?” Nicolo says, chin resting on his hand. There’s a small upturn to his lips that has Yusuf’s own hands itching for a pencil. “Some of us are meant to be captured in oil, I suppose.”</p><p>“Are my renderings suddenly not enough?” The words come out playfully, as they’re meant to, but Yusuf finds he feels them a bit deeper than that as well.</p><p>“Perhaps I wanted a new angle,” Nicolo says. “You are not quite an unbiased source.”</p><p>“Centuries of my love and suddenly you want a new angle,” Yusuf says. “He will not paint you better than I have done.”</p><p>“We shall see, hm?” Nicolo says, turning back to his newspaper. Yusuf knows it is in jest, but part of him finds some offense with the words. They have taken roles over the years, subject and artist, and the subversion leaves Yusuf on unsteady ground—heaven knows he could not so easily find another muse.</p><p>The feeling hangs somewhere in Yusuf’s head for the rest of the week, unbidden. It’s not at the forefront of his mind, more of a seed stuck in one of his molars that he’s unable to quite get rid of. It’s a stupid thing, that Nicolo should like this new painter’s craft more than Yusuf’s depictions of him, and it holds no weight for the next hundred or even fifty years and yet—he cannot stop thinking of it.</p><p>One evening, it reaches a head.</p><p>“Sébastien,” Yusuf says as he walks with their newest recruit back to the apartment they’ve taken up in. It is much too small for the four of them, but Andromache, Nicolo and he have long perfected the steps of their dance around each other. Sébastien is, as of yet, too polite to pose much of a problem. “Have you ever considered a foray into the world of art?”</p><p>“I cannot say I have,” Sébastien says, brows slightly drawn. “What little talents I have were distributed elsewhere.”</p><p>“My luck, to encounter the one modest man in all France,” Yusuf says. “And here I was, about to ask if you would like to sit for me.”</p><p>“Sit for you?” Sébastien says. “As—to paint?”</p><p>“I prefer a pencil these days, but for you I could attempt full color,” Yusuf says with a grin.</p><p>“What about Nicolo?”</p><p>Yusuf waves a hand. “I’ve drawn him thousands of times, could do it from memory alone,” he says. “I know him inside and out—you, on the other hand, I have only just met.”</p><p>“There are easier ways to get to know a man,” Sébastien says, a little gruffly. “A drink, perhaps?”</p><p>“If you are truly too shy for it, I shall try Andromache,” Yusuf says with an exaggerated frown, “and pray she does not destroy my materials for it.”</p><p>Sébastien laughs a little but sobers at Yusuf’s look. “She’s—done such a thing?”</p><p>“She does not like to be captured, even if I merely do so on a page,” Yusuf says with a smile. “I think the period where her countenance was engraved on temple walls may have put her off the idea.”</p><p>“Ah,” Sébastien says lightly, then shakes his head. “I forget, sometimes, how old you truly are.”</p><p>Yusuf hums, placing his hand on Sébastien’s shoulder. “At times, so do I.”</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>Sébastien is an awkward subject, aware at all times that he is being recorded. Even the suggestion of drink does not remove the rod from his spine; his fingers grip the glass stiffly.</p><p>“Are you breathing?” Yusuf says, drawing the rigid lines of his body. If anything, the finished project will be—interesting.</p><p>“Should I not be?” Sébastien asks, and then stills even further.</p><p>“Perfect,” Yusuf mutters under his breath. “Leonardo learned from corpses, as will I.”</p><p>“Oh, good,” Andromache says from where she’s appeared in the doorway. Yusuf catches her eye from across the room and she smiles slightly. “This should be very good.”</p><p>“I haven’t any idea as to what you’re implying,” Yusuf says with an answering grin.</p><p>“Well, she cannot be talking about the drawing,” Sébastien says, standing up. “Apologies, Yusuf, I think you are better off attempting to depict the goddess here.”</p><p>“He may try,” Andromache says with a tilt of her head.</p><p>Yusuf groans. “You are no help at all.”</p><p>Nonetheless, he leaves the half-finished sketches scattered about their shared rooms and waits. He does not have to do so for long.</p><p>Yusuf has his eyes closed against the bright midafternoon light slanting through the window when he hears someone enter their room—the pattern of footfalls say it must be Nicolo. He tries to hide a smile as he hears paper rustling.</p><p>“Ah,” Nicolo says. “So, you have found a new muse?”</p><p>“Hm?” Yusuf says, opening his eyes to catch Nicolo’s. “Oh, no, I would not go so far, but—he is an interesting subject.”</p><p>“Yes, very interesting.” Nicolo looks up from the drawings to perform a sort of half smile in Yusuf’s direction. “And perhaps we will even live so long as to be alive when the perfect medium to capture such stiffness is discovered.”</p><p>Yusuf stands to look at the images over Nicolo’s shoulder. Sébastien’s rigidness does come out in his sketches, but he likes to think he’s captured the sort of weight that hangs off their new friend as well. The darkness under his eyes, the collapse of his hand on his lap—something of the man is present in the page. “I don’t think they are so bad,” he says, resting his chin on Nicolo’s shoulder. “He is—a new subject. I must smooth out the angles.”</p><p>Nicolo hums, still looking at the drawing. There is a note of something Yusuf recognizes in the hum and he hides his smile in Nicolo’s shoulder. “I’m afraid my eye is limited,” Nicolo says. “The art itself, the movements—I know little of them.”</p><p>“What movement does that artist of yours belong to, then?” Yusuf says. “Surely he must be romantic of the highest order if he wishes to capture you.”</p><p>“Unfortunately, this one sees himself as a—what did he call it,” Nicolo says, snapping his fingers once. “A realist.”</p><p>“That is new.”</p><p>“New enough.”</p><p>“What does he want with you?” Yusuf says. “Are you more real than any other man?” He punctuates his question with a squeeze of his hand on Nicolo’s hip.</p><p>“He is charmed by working people, I think,” Nicolo says. “And should he not be? There is a feeling, sometimes, of the people here. They have recognized their power.”</p><p>“Do not let Sébastien hear you talk so fondly of France; he will have us stay indefinitely.”</p><p>Nicolo huffs a laugh. “The streets are far too filthy for that—we will crawl from the city dying again and again of the plague.”</p><p>“You paint such a picture,” Yusuf says. “Perhaps you should have been the artist.”</p><p>“I will leave that to you,” Nicolo says, pushing Yusuf’s sketches away, “and Jean.”</p><p>“Jean? You are on such terms with our realist?” Yusuf says, and there it is, the small knot of jealousy that has taken up residence in his stomach.</p><p>“I’m on such terms with half of France—it seems they are all called Jean here.”</p><p>Yusuf hums his agreement but is not put at ease.</p><p>The jealousy does not go away over the next several days, but instead festers into something that has the air around Yusuf turning stormy with it, something that has Sébastien casting wary glances and Andromache rolling her eyes. Nicolo, for the most part, seems unbothered.</p><p>When it begins, it does so innocuously enough, with blank sheets of paper.</p><p>“Not enough in all of France to inspire you to fill these, I assume?” Nicolo says, brandishing the empty pages of Yusuf’s sketchbook.</p><p>“I suppose the whimsy has not struck me as of late,” Yusuf says, keeping his tone light. “Perhaps I am ready to give up the activity altogether.”</p><p>Nicolo looks to him with a raised brow. “Do not be so dramatic.”</p><p>“Who is being dramatic?” Yusuf says. “A man can tire of a pastime; it’s certainly been long enough for that.”</p><p>“And yet you draw Sébastien?” Nicolo says, and Yusuf topples over the edge of accusation in his voice and lands squarely in indignation.</p><p>“Are you honestly jealous of that?” Yusuf says, letting his voice bleed with disbelief. “Should I fear to sketch a doorway, lest you think my mind wanders to thoughts of columns?”</p><p>Nicolo shifts slightly, crossing his arms in front of him. “I may ask the same of you,” he says, “seeing as this began with my offer to pose for a man whose art may last longer than either of us.”</p><p>They glare at each other a moment, until Yusuf can no longer stop his mouth from twitching upward and breaks out into a laugh. “Oh, very nice.”</p><p>“Stop,” Nicolo says with grin that’s trying its best to flatten out. “I am—very angry with you.”</p><p>“Oh, you are?” Yusuf says, still smiling.</p><p>“Yes.” Nicolo’s face holds nothing but fondness. “We must talk about this jealousy of yours, it will someday drive a wedge between us,” he says as he reaches out to toy with the edge of Yusuf’s shirt.</p><p>“Ah, perhaps you could teach me how to be more levelheaded,” Yusuf says. “The way you conducted yourself with the portraits of Sébastien—such grace, Nicolo.”</p><p>Nicolo’s nose scrunches a little, but the amusement does not leave his face. “I simply do not think the two of you are suited for each other.”</p><p>“Yes?”</p><p>“Yes—perhaps Sébastien will find a, ah, what do they call them? An architect, who is very comfortable with straight lines.”</p><p>“You are not very nice,” Yusuf says, smiling.</p><p>Nicolo hums noncommittally. “I like to have you to myself.”</p><p>“Better than that Jean of yours?” Yusuf says, and he is mostly teasing, not expecting a serious response.</p><p>“Yes,” Nicolo says, his voice grave. “I have always, I will always, prefer you, Yusuf.”</p><p>“You do not have to soften the blow with flattery,” Yusuf says, but his throat is a little tight. “I truly do not mind if you favor the creation of someone else.”</p><p>“But I do, utterly,” Nicolo says, his face earnest as he winds his fingers tighter into Yusuf’s shirt, drawing them closer together.</p><p>“And why is that?”</p><p>“He paints what he sees—realism, yes?” Nicolo says, tapping his knuckles on Yusuf’s chest for emphasis. “And it is brilliant, translating experiences of poverty, labor, life, to the canvas with such compassion—living art, I think he said. It is wonderful to be a moving part of that. However.”</p><p>“However?”</p><p>“You paint me as you know me.” Nicolo’s face is very close to Yusuf’s own now, his voice barely over a whisper. “You paint me as more—in your depictions, I am what I could be.”</p><p>“I only paint what I see,” Yusuf says, helpless.</p><p>“Yes,” Nicolo says with a smile. “I know.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>2 down 1 to go! thanks so much to everyone reading and commenting I love you more than I can describe</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>this one's a bit shorter than the others but I hope you enjoy it all the same!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>USA, 1964</b>
</p><p>“You could always go as,” Booker pauses for a moment, “Joe?”</p><p>“He could,” Nicolo says, keeping his voice as light as the edge of a blade. “He could also cease wearing clothes, both completely viable options.”</p><p>Yusuf laughs. “Come now, it’s not that bad—Joe,” he says, as if he is rolling it around in his mouth to see how it feels. “I like it.”</p><p>“You cannot possibly,” Nicolo says, his eyes and voice flat. “Joseph?”</p><p>“We all have to adapt, Nicolo,” Booker says. “I earlier than you, apparently, since none of you bastards care to pronounce Sébastien correctly.”</p><p>“It is your own fault for having a name like that,” Nicolo says, waving a hand. “My name has lasted,” he points his chin at Yusuf, “yours as well.”</p><p>“Of course it has,” Yusuf says, hands up in placation. “I only think, with the turning of this new millennium looming so close, we could do with a little more, as Book says, adaptability, yes?”</p><p>“We adapt only for the world to change again,” Nicolo says, but he feels more wistful than bitter. “What will be left of ourselves at the end of it?”</p><p>“You worry too much,” Yusuf says. “I will remember you as you are—as you were when I first met you, in fact—forever. You exist there.”</p><p>Nicolo exaggerates a grimace. “Ah, I see your game, make me long to be forgotten,” he says. “I would go by, by Klaus if you promised to banish that period from your mind entirely.”</p><p>“You don’t mean that,” Yusuf says. “You like the teasing—it is funny, to look back at who we were.” At Nicolo’s expression, he laughs. “It is!”</p><p>“Do you really remember so exactly?” Booker says. It is a sentiment he’s expressed before, this disbelief in the face of their knowledge of each other. It strikes a chord deep within Nicolo, one that echoes throughout him with melancholy. Of course he knows Yusuf, has known him longer than anything else—but then, Booker has no such person.</p><p>“He was a hard man to forget,” Yusuf says. His voice is that of someone about to begin a long story. Booker seems to recognize this and waves a hand.</p><p>“No, no, I don’t need the whole ordeal again,” he says. “You stabbed him, he stabbed you, you fell in love, years became centuries, the end.”</p><p>“Forgive me,” Yusuf says dryly. “Tales of our kind are indeed so common these days, I should have expected you to become bored of it.”</p><p>“Ah, leave him alone, <em>Joe</em>,” Nicolo says. “Not everyone is an insufferable romantic.”</p><p>“If you actually wanted me to never go by that name,” Yusuf says, “you shouldn’t have said it like that, hm?”</p><p>“I said it like nothing.”</p><p>“You said it like you say things.”</p><p>“Oh, my apologies,” Nicolo says, and then scrubs his voice of all inflection, “Joe.”</p><p>Yusuf places a hand delicately behind his ear and closes his eyes. “No, even that—music.” He grins. Nicolo’s mouth twitches in return.</p><p>“Like it or not, you two will have to change your names,” Booker says, a gruffness to his tone that almost startles Nicolo. “Joe is fine. Nicolo?”</p><p>Nicolo glances to Yusuf, whose expression says he’s also noticed the quality of Booker’s voice. “I truly think it does not matter,” Nicolo says slowly, “but if we must change, I suppose Nick is least offensive. Are you—alright?”</p><p>“What?” Booker says. “Yes, of course—what do you mean?”</p><p>“Come now,” Yusuf says. “Something occupies your thoughts, weighs them. Tell your friends about it.”</p><p>Booker looks between them, and an expression Nicolo can’t quite read steals over his face. Something wistful, perhaps. “I assure you, I’m fine,” he says.</p><p>“Of course,” Nicolo says. “But you would tell us if you weren’t?”</p><p>Though his face remains clouded, Booker nods. He holds Nicolo’s gaze for a moment and then looks away. Nicolo’s stomach tightens, but now hardly feels like the time to pursue this line of questioning. He only hopes he’ll know it when it arrives.</p><p>“Whatever the problem is, I can promise it is one we have seen at least a dozen times over, eh Nicolo?” Yusuf says and puts his hands up. “Oh no, my apologies, <em>Nick.</em>” He grimaces. “No, now I see what you mean.”</p><p>Nicolo raises an eyebrow, not quite wanting to put Booker’s strangeness behind them so quickly, but seeing the conversation move on all the same. “I’ve told you, there is nothing wrong with our current names.”</p><p>“Right, what suspicion do two men named Nicolo di Genova and Yusuf Al-Kaysani bring?” Booker says. His voice seems back to normal. “Two men, I might add, who are absolutely abysmal at not lapsing into dead dialects? You’ll blow our cover.”</p><p>Yusuf rolls his eyes with a fondness. “You and our precious cover.” It is, of course, a real danger, but Booker is still so young that the reality of how much the people around them will let slide has not yet sunk in. It is good, for now, to indulge his wariness.</p><p>“I just think that perhaps that by the twenty first century you should have shedded the names of dark age priests and warriors,” Booker says. “Don’t you agree?”</p><p>“Dark ages?” Yusuf says. “So dismissive—we lived those.”</p><p>“And?”</p><p>Nicolo shrugs one shoulder. “Incredibly dark.” Yusuf looks to him with betrayal before laughing.</p><p>“Yes, yes, modern times are superior, what would we do without—what are they calling it? A computer?” Yusuf says. He points to his own chest. “Joe, then?” At Booker’s nod, he points to Nicolo. “And—you are not a Nick.”</p><p>“It hardly matters,” Nicolo says, tired of the whole thing. “I can become one.”</p><p>“Please, for my sake, do not,” Yusuf says. “Nico?”</p><p>“Ah, but,” Nicolo says, tilting his head and scrunching his nose slightly.</p><p>“Oh, no, you’re right,” Yusuf says, shaking his head. “Off the table.”<br/>“What? Why?” Booker says.</p><p>“There are men, Booker, and the names attached to them, that you cannot forget,” Yusuf says. “No matter the effort.”</p><p>“Ah,” Booker says, looking lightly amused. “Nico is out, then. You said, what, Klaus, earlier? Is that—” At Nicolo and Yusuf’s combined looks he stops and puts his hands up. “Okay, okay.”</p><p>“Perhaps Nick is growing on me,” Yusuf says. “Nick, Nicolo, Nick, Nicolo, Nicky—oh, there we are.”</p><p>“Nicky?” Booker says.</p><p>“Nicky,” Yusuf confirms. “Yes?”</p><p>Nicolo thinks for a moment, but it is hard to say no to anything Yusuf says in such an eager tone. “Nicky,” he says, trying it out. It tastes like something he could grow into. “Why not.”</p><p>“Last names?” Booker says. At their looks, he smiles. “Yeah, never mind, I’ll get those.”</p><p>Yusuf, now Joe, looks to Nicky, once Nicolo. It’s the same look he’s been giving Nicky for nearly nine hundred years, one steady and painted with affection. Nicky smiles back, content in the feeling that, even as the world changes—down to their own names—the thing in the air between them will remain precisely the same.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Tunisia, present day</b>
</p><p>“Uh,” Nile says. “Guys?”</p><p>There must be something to the quality of her voice, because both Joe and Nicky’s heads snap up to where she’s standing in the doorway in an almost creepy unison. Under normal circumstances she might make a joke about it, but she’s still reeling slightly.</p><p>“Are you alright?” Joe sounds so concerned Nile almost regrets saying anything.</p><p>“Yeah, yeah,” she says, but then hesitates. “It’s—Book mentioned something during our call just now.”</p><p>Joe and Nicky share an unsubtle glance. “Something—bad?” Nicky says.</p><p>“Uh,” Nile says, her voice pitching up into a question unintentionally. “I’m not sure. He said to wait to mention it to you but—you remember how I said I’ve stopped getting those, uh, drowning dreams?”</p><p>Joe’s eyes go sharp. “You mean—”</p><p>“Madonna santa, she’s back,” Nicky finishes, his voice barely a whisper.</p><p>“She—”</p><p>“I know—”</p><p>“—after all this time—”</p><p>“—a miracle, finally her time—”</p><p>“—we have to—”</p><p>“—we must—”</p><p>“Andy.” It’s said by both of them, in near unison once more. They get up from the table.</p><p>“Hey, wait, hold on,” Nile says. “I’m not on this,” she gestures between them, “weird little wavelength, what the hell are you talking about? We’re going to tell Andy—like, right now?”</p><p>“Nile,” Joe says. “If what we think has happened has indeed occurred…” He raises an eyebrow at her, but the look in his eyes is hardly questioning. Nile gets the feeling they’ve been waiting for what she’s about to say for longer than she wants to think about.</p><p>Rather than make them wait any longer, she concedes with a tilt of her head. “Quynh’s—back.” The words feel weird in her mouth for how weighty they clearly are to the two men in the room, and how little they currently mean to her. Maybe someday she’ll understand what it’s like to be pinned underneath them but—God, she hopes not.</p><p>Joe lets out a phrase in a language she doesn’t know and can’t even guess. There are several things on his face as he grabs Nicky’s arm, who barely seems to notice the intrusion.</p><p>“You understand what we must do next,” Nicky says.</p><p>“Andy, right,” Nile says. She stops for a second. “But—I don’t know, shouldn’t we proceed with some kind of like, delicacy about this situation? Booker seemed…really weird on the phone. Weirder than usual.”</p><p>“There is nothing delicate about this situation,” Joe says with the ghost of a smile. “They were ripped apart for centuries, now is the time for the edges of the wound to meet again, as messy as they may be.” Edges of a wound may be apt, but Nile kind of thinks there are a few chunks of flesh missing from this particular laceration. Maybe the wound needs more—cleaning, or something. Whatever, she’s got unlimited time to get better at metaphors.</p><p>“Okay,” she says. “But what if she’s, I don’t know, dangerous?”</p><p>“Oh, she most certainly is,” Joe says, eyes dancing.</p><p>“No, what if she’s—hundreds of years under the ocean can’t like, <em>help</em> your mental stability, you know?”</p><p>Nicky nods, but Nile gets the sinking feeling it’s nowhere near the concession she wants it to be. “You’re right, of course,” he says. “But it doesn’t matter.”</p><p>“And that means?” she says. Joe gets a look on his face that Nile has come to dread. “No, stop it,” she says, pointing at him. “If you keep telling me how young I am I’m going to stop asking you questions all together.”</p><p>“Sorry, sorry,” Joe says, a laugh in his voice. “It’s no fault of your own—not a fault at all, in fact. It’s only that you haven’t experienced a love like that quite yet.”</p><p>“Andy and Quynh?” She’s heard the story, obviously, and seen the haunted look on Andy’s face, but any story of long-lost yearning love has only been conjecture in her own mind thus far. Confirmation is—it makes Nile feel a deep twist of something bittersweet in her stomach.</p><p>Nicky nods. “You will,” he says. “And it will be awful and consuming and you will—cling to it like it’s the only thing keeping you alive.”</p><p>“And it won’t matter how many years it has been,” Joe says. “Just to see them, it’s the only thing that carries any weight at all. Whether it’s been days, weeks, centuries at the bottom of the ocean; you are not yourself until you gaze upon their face.”</p><p>Nicky’s face holds something very gently, like a cup about to overflow. Nile can’t quite read it, but she’s certain Joe has no such trouble.</p><p>“And this is Quynh?” She looks between them. “For Andy, I mean.”</p><p>“Like no one else in the entire world could be,” Nicky says, but his eyes are squarely on Joe.</p><p>Nile blows a breath out through her teeth. This situation could, and probably very much will, explode in all of their faces. But maybe they can weather it. And maybe, if the two men in front of her are to be believed, they won’t have to.</p><p>“Okay,” she says. “Let’s go tell Andy.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>thank you so much for reading!! this is the last chapter and probably the last installation of this series in no small part bc I'm running out of pertinent calico skies lyrics lol<br/>thank you so much to everyone who read and commented!!!</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>thanks for reading! The next bit should be up in a few days! Oh also happy new year!!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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